Make plans to come to
Hickory, NC on September 18–19 for the fall CBC meeting. Hickory
lies at the foot of the Blue Ridge and provides an excellent launching
point to experience some of the mountains' best fall birding.

Carolina Bird Club

Club News

Receiving email sent from
.
You may sometimes be sent automated email messages from
, for example,
messages in connection with setting up a login account, or with using the online meeting registration system.
These messages will have a "from" address of
.
You may also receive emails with a return address of
.
Sometimes these are also automated messages, or they may be
personal communication from the Headquarters Secretary, Carol Bowman.
We have found that some mail servers will block mail from these addresses unless you create a contact
for them in advance.
Specifically known offending mail services include the ones from Microsoft:
hotmail.com, live.com, outlook.com, and perhaps others.
If your email address is in one of these domains you should add contacts for the CBC addresses.
If you suspect that you may have missed any messages, let
Kent Fiala know.
The problem is being studied but you probably have an idea what it's like dealing with Microsoft issues.

Iquitos and the Amazon — August 8–21, 2015
When many people think about birding in South America, they envision the vast rainforests of the Amazon.
There is no better place to experience the Amazon rainforests than Iquitos, Peru.

Clemson spring meeting.
CBC members enjoyed a wonderful weekend of spring birding in the South Carolina upstate around Clemson.
161 bird species were observed,
including 32 species of warblers.

Shade-grown coffee saves songbirds!

The Carolina Bird Club supports Bird Friendly® Coffee:
Attention CBC Coffee Drinkers – Save songbirds – Help the CBC!
Birds & Beans only sells Smithsonian Cert­ified Bird-Friendly coffee.
This is the most songbird-friendly certification and the only certification endorsed by the CBC Executive Comm­ittee.
The coffee tastes great and every bag you buy
will return $1 to the CBC.

CBC members practice their warbler necks at the South Carolina Botanical Gardens with director Patrick McMillan

Membership directory:
An online Carolina Bird Club membership directory is now available.
In the past, we have published a membership directory on paper from time to time, but have not done so in ten years.
The online directory has all the benefits of a paper directory, plus the benefit of always being up-to-date,
and of course the benefit of being much less expensive to publish.
The directory is accessible only to club members, not to the public; you must be logged in to access it.
We hope that you find this new feature helpful in communicating with Club members
and a “green” way to reduce the amount of paper used in publishing member directories!
The link to the membership directory can also be found on the Member Services page.

Make Birders Count:
Buy Your Duck Stamp Through the ABA
The American Birding Association has made it easy to buy a Duck Stamp.
Birders use refuges too. Buying a Duck Stamp through the ABA shows your support—as a birder—for
habitat and bird conservation.

New! Online publication. (And more.)
If you are a CBC member, you can now choose to receive The Chat and/or the CBC Newsletter online-only
instead of receiving a printed copy in the mail.
In conjunction with this new feature,
there is a new way for you to correct or change your mailing address and other contact information online.
You can even check when your dues will be coming due.

To access this new feature, click on the new link "Member Services" in the sidebar
that is on the left side of every page here.
On the Member Services page, click on "Manage my membership information".
(If you haven't yet registered your login, you will first need to do that at the
login registration page.
It's free for members, as described in the
How to access members-only content item below.)

If you choose to receive publications only online, you will be able to read them at these locations:
the page for The Chat
and the page for the CBC Newsletter.
Each time a new issue is placed on the website, we'll email you to let you know.

If you want to continue to receive your Chat and Newsletter in the mail, you do not have to do anything.
We encourage you to receive the publications online in order to save paper and postage (and to get them more quickly),
but we've made it completely your choice.

How to access members-only content.
This website has a large amount of content that is available to the public,
but there are a very few things that we restrict to our club members,
namely the most recent editions of our periodical publications,
the Newsletter and The Chat.
If you are a club member you can access member-only content by registering and using a personal login and password.
When you go to open the most recent Newsletter, or a recent Chat article, you will be prompted to login. Only members can register a personal login. How do we know if you are a member?
You can register a login only for an email address that we have on file.
Unfortunately many of our email addresses go back pretty far and may no longer be valid,
so if you find that we don't recognize your email, just let the
Headquarters Secretary, Carol Bowman ,
or the webmaster, Kent Fiala , know what your current email is.
For convenience, here is the link to register,
and here is the link to login.
The login link is also near the bottom of the navigation sidebar on the left side of every page.

Carolina Young Birders Club:
Matthew Janson is looking to lead a new young birders club for ages 18 or younger.
If you are a young birder, or know one, or are willing to facilitate the club's efforts,
please email Matthew or visit the web site.

Finding Birds in South Carolina is here!
Robin Carter wrote the definitive guide
Finding Birds in South Carolina,
published by the University of South Carolina Press, in 1993.
After the new editor of the Press decided not to reprint or revise the book,
Robin requested and received return of the copyright.
After Robin's death in 2008, his widow Caroline had the book digitized by Lulu.
Through Caroline's generosity,
the full text of the book, in searchable PDF image format, is now available for download.
Although the book is 20 years old, most of the information is still useful for finding birds.

The Birds of North Carolina is now hosted at carolinabirdclub.org!
This site aims to provide a compendium of all of the bird species recorded in North Carolina, with general information about their distribution in the state. It is a huge project by Harry LeGrand, with assistance from Ali Iyoob and John Haire, and technical wizardry by Tom Howard. Much of the data that underlies the project has come from Carolina Bird Club members, as published in Briefs for the Files and General Field Notes in The Chat, and now it has come home to the club web site, after a year at nature123.net.
The permanent link “Birds of NC” in the navigation bar at the left will take you there.

Band codes: MODO? RTHU? NSWO? Would you like to understand more about those four-letter bird codes?
Read more about them.

Chat searchable database:
There is a wealth of information about the birds of the Carolinas
published in The Chat, and as another step toward making it more
accessible, a searchable database covering
all of the Briefs for the Files and Bird Records Committee reports from volumes
51–70 (years 1987–2006) of The Chat is now available.
When was a Red-necked Stint last seen? Little Stint?
Have we ever had a good year for Evening Grosbeaks?
Find the answers quickly here.

Cumulative Chat index:
There is a wealth of information about the birds of the Carolinas
published in The Chat, and as another step toward making it more
accessible, a 30-year index to The Chat, so far covering volumes
45–74, years 1981–2010, is now available.

Birding North Carolina,
the long-awaited guide to birding sites in the state,
has now been published.
Edited by Marshall Brooks and Mark Johns, this book features the best birding
sites in North Carolina as chosen and described by the members of the Carolina Bird Club.
The book is available from
Globe Pequot Press.

Birding North Carolina was undertaken by the Carolina Bird Club for two
purposes: to promote birding in North Carolina and to make birding more
accessible to all skill levels of birders by providing information regarding the
wonderful birding opportunities that we have in our state; and to further bird
conservation by dedicating the income from the guide to bird conservation
projects.
Proceeds will go into a special account of the Carolina Bird Club to be used to support
and further bird conservation projects in the state.

There are so many birding locations in North Carolina that not all of them could be included in the printed book.
Descriptions of an additional 44
locations are published exclusively on this web site.
Click on
"Birding Sites: North Carolina" in the frame at left.

The Carolina Bird Club is a non-profit organization
which represents and supports the birding community in the Carolinas
through its official website, publications, meetings, workshops, trips, and partnerships,
whose mission is

To promote the observation, enjoyment, and study of birds.

To provide opportunities for birders to become acquainted, and to share information and experience.

To maintain well-documented records of birds in the Carolinas.

To support the protection and conservation of birds and their habitats and foster an appreciation and respect of natural resources.

To promote educational opportunities in bird and nature study.

To support research on birds of the Carolinas and their habitats.

Membership is open to those interested in the
study and conservation of wildlife, particularly birds.
Is that you? Then join the
club.

The Club meets three times a year
(Spring, Fall,
and Winter) at different locations in North or South
Carolina, or occasionally in neighboring states.